As I was watching the Panorama documentary The Menopause Industry Uncovered, I was reeling. I was reeling for all these women misled by the celebrity GP aka the “Menopause Doctor”.
HRT is a fantastic tool in the toolbox of managing the perimenopausal symptoms but it’s not the only tool. And yes, in some cases, it may worsen the symptoms. Why? Estrogen naturally fluctuates during the menstrual cycle, but its changes are often erratic during perimenopause and therefore by introducing more estrogen during this time of our life it might smoothen the troughs, but it can exacerbate the peaks. Therefore, it is crucial that we look at SYMPTOMS, age, genetic make-up, lifestyle, what stage of perimenopause the person is, health history and what all the other hormones are doing, nutrition, exercise, etc. – in short, everything, including looking at all other tools.
And yes, some women might be ‘poor absorbers’ but consistently prescribing higher unlicensed doses of HRT (often without matching progesterone to estrogen) will increase the risks of for example endometrial hyperplasia (overgrowth of the endometrium).
I hope you can distinguish the nuance here: HRT is safe but extremely high doses probably are not.
In the documentary, one woman started to experience heavy bleeding and pelvic pain which is only expected with upping estrogen without adjusting the levels of progesterone eventually leading to endometrial hyperplasia. And guess what, she’s now facing a hysterectomy (the removal of the uterus). And all for the price of £2,300 at the ‘specialist’ ‘private’ clinic.
Another woman had her cancer returning, not because HRT isn’t safe, but because perhaps her oncologist should have been contacted before she was put on HRT (estrogen is often not recommended for cancer survivors as some cancers are estrogen-positive).
Can we please stop the worship of celebrity gurus?
Could we please start using some critical thinking?
I sometimes wonder why there is such a wisdom vacuum.
And why we’re so quick to blame our hormones for everything.
Let’s look at the below video:
This is such a leading question. Plus, how would women know?
If I ask a random woman on the street: give me 3 symptoms of high estrogen or low progesterone – they would not know.
Bah, let’s make it easier: explain how both estrogen and progesterone is fluctuating during the menstrual cycle and when progesterone would not be sufficient. What symptoms would that give you? How would these symptoms manifest in your physical body, performance and mood? What can you do about it?
Well, if we’re going to blame our hormones for everything, we should have a basic understand about them, right?
Blaming the hormones for everything is fashionable. It’s what we do. It’s what we did for centuries. The narrative that women were mentally unstable because the ovaries were ruling their brain is still, in this day and age, prevalent.
You wouldn’t like a man talking about you: “she’s hormonal’ or ‘she’s menopausal’ or even worse: ‘she’s on her period’. But we do this to ourselves. We blame our hormones for everything, without knowing anything about them.
Ignorance ignites fear. And actions taken from the space of fear can never be logical. Because when we are in the space of fear (the fight-and-flight side of the nervous system) logical thinking is not accessible to us. Critical thinking is not accessible to us. It’s easier to fall into a trap of worshipping gurus and relying on other people to tell us what to do or what to take.
I really don’t understand why there is such a wisdom vacuum. It’s not only to do with understanding our physiology (and hormones) but a lot of us are oblivious to knowing the wisdom of plants and herbs. Some of us don’t even know how to cook. What plants have cooling or heating properties, what are adaptogens and how the sheroic medicine should be the first point of action, when the body is still only whispering, not when it’s already screaming!
The documentary talks about the dubious supplement industry but it’s not all black and white. Coffee could be treated as a supplement. Matcha could be treated as a supplement. As well as my beloved Ashwagandha and Schisandra Berries.
We have to distinguish between supplements that are sold as a package, usually as a menopausal ‘cure’ package with a lot of random foreign-sounding ingredients and actual herbs that have been serving us for millennia.
As Milli Hill puts it in one of her blog posts: We know nothing about something we’ve not bothered to think about much.
I know we are all busy and time is of the essence. But black-and-white scenarios and quick health hacks won’t work. If we don’t invest time in learning about our physiology, we will have to heavily rely on other people.
It’s high time we rise from that wisdom vacuum and start rediscovering the wisdom that we were born with.
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